Unipolar Pos & Neg Reservoirs

[BioFarmer93]

The 1" HDPE is on the way, and the rebuild is eminent, The Bio-beast is re-emerging from its long hiatus with a leaner, meaner and slightly arctic look to it. Only 5 plates per group this time, media blasted, bumping up to .120" plate gaps, and inverting the orientation of the plates to put the (now) 2 gas holes at the top, and the (now) single make-up hole at the bottom.

My plate groups, like Larry's, will be separated by divider plates that are separately drilled to serve the group on each side of it.
My Pos & Neg plates will alternate from group to group like this:
[]+-+-+[]-+-+-[]+-+-+[]-+-+-[]+-+-+[]-+-+-[]+-+-+[]

So, whatever plate, Pos or Neg that resides immediately next to a divider, is going to determine which reservoir that group draws water from. By alternating the polarity of the end plates from group to group it allows me to break any circuit that may be established through electrolyte, and also allows the use of only 2 reservoirs without current leakage concerns, I think... If anyone see's a reason why this will not be so, please clearly explain it to me so that I can alter my plans.:D:D

[myoldyourgold]

Shane I think that each set has a separate reservoir so no current leakage between the 7 sets. ( I think LOL) The leakage will be contained to one set. Now that is where the rub comes. I believe that in any flow through reactor will have some leakage but I believe this is as close as you can get to no leakage with out having every pair on a separate reservoir. With properly insulated and positioned ports the leakage is extremely small, almost none in a unipolar serial setup when done right.

Gus do your plates have duel connections? With duel connections port location is much more critical.

After rereading what was posted I see there are only going to be two reservoirs and I then have to agree with Shane. Just went over my head that ones ending in - went to one reservoir and sets ending in + goes to another reservoir. There will be leakage

[BioFarmer93]

Shane and Carter- Thank you.
I will have to make the appropriate measurements then (if I can figure out how) to determine if the amount of leakage is serious enough to warrant group specific bubblers... I sure hope not.

[myoldyourgold]

Gus I gave this some more thought and the worst thing that I see happening is you change the whole flow of current turning some plates into bipolar plates. Not what you really want to do. I could almost bet on this. I hope you examined your plates very carefully when you took it apart. There are some very interesting things that go on in Unipolar setups that are not obvious at first and only detectable on the plates themselves.

[BioFarmer93]

I suppose I could use a short piece of sacraficial hose between two splice fittings and just jab the probes into the e-lyte. If there were any visualazation difficulties, here is a picture. I'm not disagreeing with you guys, I'm just saying that I am having difficulty understanding where the leakage is going to be "from - to".

[myoldyourgold]

It is quite simple some of the positives are going to change to negatives and vice versa just like they change in a series connection. It is positive on one side of the wire and negative on the other. Consider the liquid as a wire and start following it around. Where it gets very confusing is when things go bipolar and that even confuses the best of them and makes it almost impossible to measure it, but can be seen on the plates.

[myoldyourgold]

Shane you could be right and I am testing that right now. It is much more complex than one can imagine. I have left a number connections off and removed part of the Faraday cage on purpose because some of this is proprietary.

[myoldyourgold]

You are so right on the concentration of electrolyte. I agree there 100% I have found maximum concentration only causes more problems and does not solve squat for me in my particular setup.

[mike915]

Gus I gave this some more thought and the worst thing that I see happening is you change the whole flow of current turning some plates into bipolar plates. Not what you really want to do. I could almost bet on this. I hope you examined your plates very carefully when you took it apart. There are some very interesting things that go on in Unipolar setups that are not obvious at first and only detectable on the plates themselves.

Hi, I've been reading about the unipolar design but I can not understand what are you saying here. If the electrons travel from negative to positive, why should it be current leakage if the hoses are from pos-pos or neg-neg? and why should the plates change their polarity?

Mike

[myoldyourgold]

Hi, I've been reading about the unipolar design but I can not understand what are you saying here. If the electrons travel from negative to positive, why should it be current leakage if the hoses are from pos-pos or neg-neg? and why should the plates change their polarity?


Mike, when done right in a pure unipolar setup like Gus's there is no active bipolar plates. As far as how a bipolar plates changes polarity is quite simple. Current must get to the plate through the electrolyte (not a connected wire) then go through the plate and through electrolyte again to another plate. When it doses this it has one side positive and the other side negative. Gus can explain exactly how the unipolar works. Lots of things have changed since this thread. Read some of the newer threads.

[mike915]

Mike, when done right in a pure unipolar setup like Gus's there is no active bipolar plates. As far as how a bipolar plates changes polarity is quite simple. Current must get to the plate through the electrolyte (not a connected wire) then go through the plate and through electrolyte again to another plate. When it doses this it has one side positive and the other side negative. Gus can explain exactly how the unipolar works. Lots of things have changed since this thread. Read some of the newer threads.

Well yes, I understand why the bipolar plates changes their polarity but I can not understand the matter of having more than one reservoir, it has to be with current leakage but I can't get it, I'm supposing that the current travels trough the hoses and the reservoir, is that? :confused: because I understand current leakage like the current traveling by paths that are longer than the ones between the plates

[myoldyourgold]

You will find if your measure the voltage in the reservoir that it will be close to the same voltage as is between each plate. Put one probe in the electrolyte and the other to ground and read the voltage. Regardless how you separate the reservoirs this is the case. Based on that there has to be some leakage just a lot less than in a single reservoir. Unless you are pumping a lot of electrolyte out with your HHO you will have very little actual current leakage. Try and keep the HHO coming out of your reactor to be as dry as possible. Just bubbles is the best. It also makes a difference how far away your reservoir is. The further away the less current leakage there will be. It always takes the path of least resistance and this is the biggest advantage of the unipolar setup because all the plates are hard wired and the current does not have go trough the plates but travels on the path of least resistance which when the plates are prepped properly is on the surface.